"I Kill My Own Ideas, Why?"

“I often kill off my own ideas before I even give them a real chance, why?”

I had someone ask me this today, and I think it’s a common issue for most people.

What’s common is the pressure we put on an idea to be the “right” one before we even start. We want to wait until we know it will be a smash hit, or that it will be immediately successful.

And in doing so, we kill the urge to work on it.

That happens because as we start to place more expectations on an idea, we build up pressure on it, and in doing so begin to fear the consequences of it not being as good as we’d thought.

Even worse, this fear of consequence makes us become protective over our ideas, and so we tiptoe around how we approach it.

(Safe work is rarely successful).

Or we slow down our pace so that we don’t misstep on this perfect idea.

(Slow speed and lack of momentum is a sure way to kill your idea).

The hard part isn’t selecting the “good idea.”

We quit much more often on our own, then the market making us quit.

And so the truth is, the only good idea is the one that you truly want to work on.

This is approach; selecting ideas based on how much you truly want to work on them, is actually practical.

First, because we’re a terrible judge of ideas. We are 50/50 at best. Most investors, even the best in the world passed up Airbnb (and 1,000’s of other successful companies).

Second, because most companies pivot.

Twitter started as a Podcasting App, and no business ends up looking like the original business plan.

So If we are a terrible judge of ideas, and if almost every business pivots away from the original idea…the only way forward is to work on an idea understanding that you have no clue if it will be good or not.

And that brings us to the heart of the matter.

That we aren’t working on an idea at all because of our fear of it not being “right.”

The only “good idea” is the one that you truly want to work on.

You’ll figure the rest out from there.

xx David